Garret SavageFriends and family are mourning Karen Schmeer, who was killed Friday in New York by a getaway car.In a place as overwhelming as New York City, Portland native and award-winning film editor Karen Schmeer found a way to make it homey.

She once lugged a platter of lasagna on the subway for more than an hour to a friend's house for dinner. She loved to bake and often showed up on friends' doorsteps with pies or a crowd-pleasing chocolate cake with her secret ingredient -- sauerkraut.

This weekend, friends and family gathered in cities across the country to mourn their loss. The 39-year-old was struck Friday night by a getaway car in a Manhattan drugstore robbery.

The driver of the car was arrested on a murder charge shortly after the crash. Police are still looking for a passenger who fled from the car as well as a third suspect connected with the theft of over-the-counter medication.

"She loved the genuineness of being together around a table," longtime friend Maribeth Edmonds of Southhampton, New York, said Sunday. "She really wasn't attracted to go to the latest place or the coolest place. She liked to be around people she loved. I think she was the most at home in the casual and genuine setting."

"You never really heard about her stuff unless you cornered her and made her tell you about her accomplishments," Edmonds said.

For the past five months, she had worked on an untitled film about the late chess champion Bobby Fischer for HBO and the BBC.

Liz Garbus, director and producer of the film, said she had to fight and be patient to secure Schmeer for the film. Garbus, who knew of Schmeer's earlier work, said she was impressed with her talent and work ethic.

"She got inside the heads of the subjects of the stories that she was telling and brought out their humanness their humor and their darkest moments; (they) kind of commingled in this symphony," Garbus said. "She was an intellectual, but she was funny. She just combined all of these qualities that made for the best type of storytelling."

Schmeer developed her love of films as a student at Lincoln High School, where she graduated in 1988.

She worked as a ticket-taker and snack vendor at a nearby movie theater where she became engrossed in photography and films.

Her grandfather was Ray Atkeson, the famed Oregon landscape photographer. Schmeer often accompanied him on his photography sessions and would later drive when Atkeson's eyes began to fail him, her mother, Eleanor DuBois, said from her home in Portland.

Paula Winch-Paulorinne, two years behind Schmeer in school, became her best friend, often watching non-mainstream films and cruising in Schmeer's 1980s Ford Escort, named "Petunia," to the now-closed Quality Pie on Northwest 23rd Avenue.

"It was quality time with her," said Winch-Paulorinne of Tampere, Finland. "Whoever she was with, she was totally present with them."

While visiting central Oregon before moving to Finland, Winch-Paulorinne nearly missed Schmeer, who was visiting Portland. Schmeer convinced her father, Michael Schmeer, to fly his two-seat plane to the Redmond airport so they could spend five hours together.

"She was such a loyal friend," Winch-Paulorinne said.

Schmeer studied anthropology at Boston University. After graduating in 1992, she landed an unpaid internship with Morris. She eventually rose through the ranks, gaining his trust.

In 1997, Morris told The Oregonian that he credited Schmeer for saving "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control," which he began working on in the 1980s, by "convincing me to make longer passages and not allow the visual style to overwhelm the movie."

Schmeer returned to Oregon as much as her schedule would allow to spend time with her parents, who are divorced, and her older siblings, Kristen Borges-Silva and James Schmeer.

Her niece, Alexis Borges-Silva, a University of Oregon freshman, said her aunt was her hero and often gave her advice about friendships and confidence. Other survivors include a nephew, Nick Borges-Silva; and Joan McAllister, the longtime partner of Schmeer's father.

"She was so young, and it's so terrible," Alexis Borges-Silva said Sunday. "But at the same time, where she left off in her life, she definitely accomplished something. Not only was she talented, but she touched so many people."

Schmeer was to have celebrated her 40th birthday Feb. 20 and dubbed it the "Day of Wretchedness." Friends were planning a weekend of celebration, exchanging e-mails to discuss custom-made shirts reading "Friends of Karen United" and the songs, poems and food they would enjoy.

Leah Marino, a college roommate and documentary film editor in Austin, Texas, said: "I'm sure it was going to be the best day of wretchedness ever."